Swearing in informal spoken English: 1990s–2010s

Abstract This paper investigates changes in swearing usage informal speech using large-scale corpus data, comparing the occurrence and social distribution of swear words two corpora spoken British English: demographically-sampled part Spoken National Corpus 1994 (BNC1994) 2014 (BNC2014); compilation latter has facilitated large-scale, diachronic analyses authentic data on a scale which has, until now, not been possible. A form frequency analysis set 16 ‘pure’ word lemma forms is presented. The findings reveal that significantly lower BNC2014 but still within comparable range to previous studies. Furthermore, FUCK found overtake BLOODY as most popular lemma. Finally, across gender age groups generally supports research: males more than females, peaks twenties declines thereafter. However, according socio-economic status be complex expected 2010s requires further investigation. also reflects some methodological challenges associated with making comparisons between corpora.